Website Maker Or Breaker?
Copyright (c) 2012 Act Now Domains
Choosing a website maker isn't as easy as it may seem to the uninitiated. The further a prospective webmaster investigates the field of web design, the more choices present themselves. As more choices present themselves to the webmaster, the more complex those possibilities become. The more complicated those web design choices become, the more information the webmaster will need to make the design decisions.
Ultimately, the only real website builder is the webmaster himself. Only he will make the design choices, the programming selections, the search engine optimization, and concoct the linking strategies. Only his last yay or nay will complete the design. The credit, or blame, will ultimately go to him. No one blames the jockey if the quarter horse misses its stride.
Some desktop design website building products like HTML editors and other similar software are quite capable of producing an acceptable professional website. The more powerful products that have the capacity to produce top-notch results have a steeper learning curve. These programs need some degree of programming awareness, if not full knowledge. A complete website-building beginner may encounter such software and be utterly lost. Other first-timers are able to leap over the learning hurdles and build an acceptable website.
If a webmaster's programming abilities are developed enough, he won't even need a piece of software. There are webmasters who code their websites in text editors without once resorting to a WYSIWYG interface or proofing it in a browser. However, those webmasters won't be seeking information on website-building, so merely acknowledging their existence is all one needs to do in this context.
There are, of course, simpler types of website-building software with more intuitive interfaces. Many beginners have no problem learning the ropes in a short time on these types of software. The cardinal problem with simpler types of software is they sometimes produce dirty code that isn't up to professional standards. Professional standards consistency encourages a broader display coherency through all types of browsers. It's a leaner and meaner way to assure oneself a website will look the same to everyone. If a webmaster is willing to fudge code and proof it repeatedly in browsers, then standards consistency is not as important. As long as his website displays correctly to him through most browsers, it will be an acceptable website. How his website visitors feel about it is another matter entirely.
One of the benefits of the simpler HTML and WYSIWYG software is that it tends to be cheaper than the high-end products. It requires less skill and has a much gentler learning curve. There is even freeware that will do the basic work. It's also possible to design unique, complicated, highly technical and graphically pleasing sites with such basic software. It merely requires time, patience, webmaster knowledge, and a lot of time in the browser proofing and grooming stages.
There are multiple online scripts now that will produce a basic and relatively clean website in a short time. Such online services, however, while being fast and often cheap, consistently produce results that are similar in appearance. One's website shouldn't look like everybody else's. The same problem befalls webmasters who fall back on design templates. Thousands of websites are built with these design templates every year. Similar-looking sites, especially to experienced Web visitors, will no longer be able to distinguish themselves. Even if the similar-looking site is a high-quality website, it's likely to become part of the visual background noise of Internet experience for many users.
The best website maker, for those with the financial resources, is probably a design professional. They've already crossed all the bridges a new webmaster will still have before him. Another aspect of the new abundance of website design tools is that professional design has actually become cheaper. It's no longer necessary to take matters into one's own hands to produce an affordable website.
About the Author
Samantha Silas has been writing and teaching others about internet products and services that are used to establish an internet presence for more than six years. She serves as the web marketing coordinator for Act Now Domains. For more information about a specific product or service visit http://www.ActNowDomains.com.
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